Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks

 Frank M. Snowden Jr.  (1911-2007) was an influential historian, Classics professor, and cultural attaché whose scholarship focused on the African experience in the ancient world.

Color discrimination, visual cultures, color-conscious societies, attitudes, black-white relations

• What was the image of Black Africans in the minds of Mediterranean people?
• What attitudes– antagonistic or favorable– can be inferred from visual cultures and textual sources?
• During what stage in the history of race relations did skin color attain the importance it has assumed in the modern world?
• What elements were the most predominant in the shaping of Greek and Roman attitudes toward African blacks?

Snowden examines iconographic and textual evidence from Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and early Christian views that depicts or describes encounters and relations between African and Mediterranean people from ca. 3000 BCE to 400 CE. View this  visual map  for a schematic representation of each chapter’s theme.

Snowden scrutinizes modern scholarship that “[sees] color prejudice where none existed” in iconographical and textual evidence concerning ancient blacks (64).

• Nomenclature: Students should be aware of the shifting nomenclature the author employs in order to follow his analyses with greater ease. 

Kush and Kushites: refers to Egyptian and Assyrian encounters.

Ethiopian and Ethiopians: refers to Greek, Roman, and Christian encounters.

Nubia and Nubians: refers to the general term for Snowden’s region of study and its inhabitants. 

Napatans: refers to Nubians of Napatan Kingdom of Kush (750 to 300 BCE).

Meroïtes: refers to Nubians of Meroïtic Kingdom of Kush (300 BCE to 350 CE). 

• Social science terms: In “Toward an Understanding of the Ancient View,” Snowden uses modern social scientific terminology to supplement his study of color prejudice in antiquity. (Outside definitions that align with the author’s understandings are provided where Snowden does not provide precise statements.)

Color prejudice: “an unreasonable dislike or unfair treatment of people who have a different skin color” (“Color prejudice.” Cambridge Dictionary,  https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/color-prejudice ). This term is a fundamental part of Snowden’s thesis, which claims that sources “point to a highly favorable image of blacks and to white-black relationships differing markedly from those that have developed in more color-conscious societies” (vii). 

Somatic norm image theory: Snowden refers to H. Hoetink’s definition, which denotes “‘the complex of physical (somatic) characteristics which are accepted by a group as its norm and ideal,’ pointing out that each group considers itself aesthetically superior to others” (75-6). The author uses this term to elaborate on Greek and Roman ethnocentric judgments of other societies (63).  

Color symbolism: “The deliberate use of colour to represent some abstract concept, typically according to some shared code or convention within a culture, subculture, or religion” (Chandler, D. and Munday, R. “Colour symbolism.” A Dictionary of Media and Communication, Oxford University Press, 2011). This term explains ancient and modern reactions to color, and importantly illuminates Greek and Roman associations of the color black (83). 

Environment Theory of Racial Differences: “The view that the flora, fauna, and human inhabitants of a region and their manner of life are determined to a large extent by diversity of climatic, topographical, and hydrographical conditions…” (85). Snowden refers to this form of classical anthropology that accounts for how Mediterranean whites thought about African blacks’ physical and cultural characteristics.

“What is significant is not the objective truth of ancient reports, but the frame of mind that made them possible. Perceptions are often influential in shaping social attitudes and are important factors to be considered in assessing the Mediterranean view of blacks” (58). 

“But the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and early Christians were free of what Keith Irvine has described as the ‘curse of acute color-consciousness, attended by all the raw passion and social problems that cluster around it’” (108).

Snowden works within outdated anthropological classification systems and racial terminologies when analyzing his visual evidence. Students should pay special attention to the author’s rationale for the nomenclature he employs on pages 16-17. But they might also reflect on the valence of each word, some of which originate in and perpetuate oppressive systems of power.

This book is suitable for students of ancient civilizations studies, as well as for those of the social sciences. It is a useful comparative tool that lends insight into the image of black people in contemporary, color-conscious societies versus antiquity. Snowden provides historical overviews that acquaint the unfamiliar reader with each period and culture.

Miller, D. A. Review of Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks, by Frank M. Snowden, Jr. Journal of Social History, vol. 20, no. 3, 1987, pp. 646-47. ProQuest.

• Miller praises Snowden’s “extraordinarily complete examination both of the ancient texts and of ancient art,” but critiques the author’s simplistic cramming of observations drawn from a complex and wide range of time periods and cultures; this might disregard important variations that are worth exploring. Thus, Snowden’s “one frame” analysis renders the evidence as a bit distorted. Miller also draws attention to assessments by other scholars, like Orlando Patterson’s critique that Snowden disregards “clear proofs of ancient color-prejudice”.

Mitchell, Richard E. Review of Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks, by Frank M. Snowden, Jr.  Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 27, no. 2, 1993, pp. 113–14.  JSTOR .

• Mitchell offers a concise summary of Snowden’s methodology and arguments, which students will find helpful. This author picks up on an important distinction that adds nuance to the scholarly debate over Snowden’s thesis: “[asserting that] ancient prejudices were not based on color is not the same thing as claiming the Classical world was free of prejudice generally” (114).

Students who are looking for supplements to Snowden’s early, yet influential, thesis might consult  Sarah F. Debrew’s Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity  for a more recent approach to a similar topic. Howard French’s Born in Blackness similarly places Africa at the forefront for its methodology, but it examines African history in the modern world (versus Snowden’s focus on antiquity).

Citations

Snowden, Frank M. Jr. Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks. Harvard University Press, 1983.

Images

1. Models: Troop of Nubian Archers. Painted wood., XI-XII Dynasty (ca. 2000 B.C.). Cairo, Egyptian Museum., JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.14781345. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.

2. Mosaic with Scenes of Hunting and Farming with a Black Man at the Foot of a Tree Trapping a Fowl and Men on Horseback Hunting. Mosaic., III century A.D. Tunis, Musée National du Bardo., JSTOR, https://jstor.org/stable/community.14783404. Accessed 13 Feb. 2024.